Hell Awaits: Extreme and Underground Metal from Thou, Old Wainds, Krigsgrav, and more

Hell Awaits is a column by Kim Kelly and Andy O'Connor that shines a light on extreme and underground metal. This week, Kim dives into a slew of new black metal releases from Old Wainds, Krigsgrav, Woman Is The Earth, and Voidcraeft as well as a couple Southern surprises from Thou and Mule Skinner. Welcome to Hell.

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Old Wainds: “Not The Sun Nor The Moon”

Russia’s best black metal band has returned! We’ve heard nary a peep from Murmansk’s Old Wainds since 2008’s Смерть Север Культ, but finally, new material looms on the dark horizon. Nordraum is out April 1 courtesy of Negative Existence. The album itself is sharply melodic and frozen to the core, a pitch-perfect example of the band’s untouchable black metal art. The ghosts of Quorthon and Nödtveidt howl at Nordraum’s door and leave bloody fingerprints behind. Kholdogor’s slavering vocals rend and tear through Morok’s lightning-quick, often thrashy leads and Izbor’s thunderous double bass, and a pervasive chill cloaks the record in ancient evil. As far as fast, frostbitten extreme metal goes, it doesn’t get much better than this.

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Woman Is The Earth: “Crown & Bone/Dreamer”

To most of us, the Black Hills of South Dakota seem like wild, unexplored territory. But to the three souls behind Woman Is The Earth, it’s just home, and those wide open surroundings must have informed the spacious songwriting on their latest release. The atmospheric black-metal trio have just completed work on their third full-length, Depths, out April 1 on Init. It’s a gorgeous, impassioned album, and miles ahead of even their best earlier work (like 2012’s solid This Place That Contains My Spirit, which Eisenwald is due to rerelease in April). Woman Is The Earth aren't quite reinventing the wheel, but they do polish it up awfully nice with post-black metal gloss. Lush melodies shimmer and pulsate alongside cruel tremolo riffs and ragged howls, homage is paid to both Weakling and the early days of Wolves in the Throne Room, and the final result is pretty spellbinding.

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Thou: “Milk It” [Nirvana cover]

Baton Rouge sludge collective Thou have never hid their love of grunge—check out their ever-present flannels and the slew of Nirvana covers that pepper their mile-long discography. So it’s no surprise to see them take part in Robotic Empire’s upcoming In Utero tribute album, which also features contributions from Pygmy Lush, Daughters, Young Widows, Jay Reatard, and Black Math Horseman. (Its vinyl release will coincide with Record Store Day, April 19.) Thou’s version of “Milk It” sounds like a warped record playing at half speed—all you’d want, really. Frontman Bryan Funck sure knows his way around a Cobain vocal by now, and the wiry Southerner’s approach on “Milk It” stays truer to the original than his usual brutalizing fare. Instead of screaming bloody murder atop that familiar (albeit fattened up and subterraneanly down-tuned) riff, Funck stays clean, mirroring Cobain’s glum-mumble-turned-agonized-howl delivery. It works, and adds a new dimension to a band known best for their cathartically heavy crescendos of doom. I bet Kurt would’ve dug this one.

Krigsgrav was my favorite discovery at this year’s SXSW. It’s an awful shame that so many people missed their set at the Austin Beer Garden Brewery, because this Fort Worth band doled out the most interesting performance I saw all week. Their woodsy take on black metal was atmospheric and heavily folk-influenced, built on brittle melodies and harsh, bright tones. The buzzing cloud of ambiance they operate beneath isn’t too far removed from Drudkh and early Ulver, and the whole package is wrapped up nice and tight. Krigsgrav has been operating in various forms since 2004, but they only recently morphed into a live entity. The quartet’s third full-length, The Carrion Fields will be released by Germany’s Naturmacht later this year. Stream a new tune from the forthcoming release above, and check out some older Krigsgrav material here.

Voidcraeft: “Meditation on Despair”

This nightmarish extreme metal “band” is willfully obscure and utterly removed from any sort of scene, so much that the man behind it admits that his entire recreational life takes place online, and that he’s only had two visitors to his home in the past seven years. He cavalierly acknowledges that most may find his lifestyle "disturbing"... and that’s before they even get a load of what he’s doing with Voidcraeft. It’s an unholy mishmash of warfare noise and muffled violence that borrows liberally from the punishing progress and offbeat time signatures of Portal and Deathspell Omega and references the chaotic, choked-out black fire of Katharsis and Funeral Mist. War metal savagery collides with cerebral riff mangling. Primitive ways siphon off avant-garde ideas. Voidcraeft quietly churns out music that is genuinely unsettling and possibly insane, and even offers it all for free download on its creator’s website. Suffice to say this is a challenging listen, but the rewards are great. You have been warned.

Mule Skinner: “Revenge & Salvation”

New Orleans may be best known as the boozy birthplace of slow-burning riff worshippers like Eyehategod and Down, but the Big Easy has always had a taste for the fast stuff, too. Mule Skinner was a Flesh Parade-affiliated short-lived grind/hardcore hybrid that took a few pages out of Soilent Green’s nascent playbook and tore through ‘em at warp speed, and now they’ve returned. Eighteen years after the release of their underground classic Abuse, Mule Skinner have shaken off the dust, picked up a few new members, and released the three-track Crushing Breakdown EP in preparation for an upcoming full-length. Despite its vintage, the new material sounds fresh and pissed—all crushing riffs, blinding tempos, and hoarse roars. There’s a little sludgy swing in their step, but the backbone is all snotty punk, pissed-off grind, and break-yer-neck hardcore. Welcome back, fellas.